Like father, like son–almost everybody must have heard this. But is there any truth to this old saying?
Not much, it turns out.
Judging someone’s traits based on their parents has almost no merit.
Statistically, most daughters are not like their mothers, and most sons are not like their fathers.
Even identical twins who share 100 percent of their genes are usually far from having identical personalities.
Genes don’t matter all that much for any given individual’s personality. The genes that children and parents share do not make them much more similar than any two strangers.
So, don’t try to predict a person’s traits from those of their mom or dad. You will almost inevitably get them wrong in one way or another. You'll probably get most of them wrong, in fact.
Most parents, including myself, can probably agree with this. For better or worse, we usually cannot recognize ourselves in our children. Somehow they grow to be the persons they need to be rather than what we are or what we want them to be.
Oh, and this has at least one more implication. Suppose someone proposes to you, but they have a trait that you are not a big fan of and that you worry may show up in your future children. But if you can live with that trait in your partner, then the trait is not a good reason to reject their proposal because it is a pretty good chance your children won’t have it.
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